By GENC POLLO*

For the third time in the last two years, Serbia last week put its armed forces on alert and has deployed them to the border with Kosovo. Apart from infantry and armor, fighter jets have been flying along Kosovo’s airspace.

Belgrade the arsonist

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has verbosely explained on each occasion that his military was ready to intervene in neighboring Kosovo to prevent the suffering of the Serbian community there. In the first two instances, the Kosovo authorities were attempting to get Kosovo Serbs in the north to use Kosovo plates rather than Serbian ones.

In the third and current instance, the Kosovo police were escorting four newly elected mayors into their offices. The Serb majority in the northern municipalities had boycotted the mayoral elections so the elected mayors had a different ethnic background. Furthermore the election was caused by the resignations of the incumbent mayors last December. Both the resignations and the election boycott happened at the behest of Belgrade.

The real problem is the threat to use military force

Such local crises are not a threat to Serbia. Nor are they a violation of Serb rights that should elicit a such a military response by Kosovo’s northern neighbor. The real problem is that the Serbian President threatens his smaller neighbor with the use of military force.

The 1945 UN Charter signatories vowed to “suppress aggression” and to “refrain…from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”. Stronger and more detailed language permeates the OSCE agreements of which Serbia is also a party.

The EU and US make it worse

Perhaps the most alarming development isn’t Vucic’s bravado but the Western response to it. The EU and the US, who are facilitating a “normalization process” between the two Balkan states, have not condemned in clear terms this breach of international law. Instead they have spoken softly of concern while simultaneously chastising Kosovo for the deployment of her police force on her own territory. According to press reports, US and European officials have quietly asked Vucic to withdraw his units.

Some are tempted to say that Serbia is merely gesticulating for domestic consumption. Belgrade knows it cannot match KFOR, the NATO-led troops stationed in Kosovo. That might be true. But this didn’t hinder Belgrade from instigating riot in northern Kosovo to violently attack deployed KFOR units, including with firearms. Dozens of hospitalized soldiers, some in critical condition, were the consequence. NATO had to send in reinforcements.

End appeasement

History teaches us that many past wars were deemed impossible until they broke out, in some cases unintentionally.

It would be in the West’s best interest to end appeasement of the would-be aggressor and to ensure that the threat of using military force is unacceptable, especially by states claiming to want to join the European Union.

*Genc Pollo is a former government minister and member of parliament in Albania. Written on June 8, 2023.